Research On Zoom Lens Design With Liquid Lenses

Liquid lens is a new type of optical component, whose focal length is adjustablewith the change of its shape or refractive index controlled by some method.Comparing with the traditional zoom lenses, a new type of zoom system withvariable-focus elements will quickly change its focus without any moving part. Inrecent years, several different types of liquid tunable lens technologies have beendeveloped and commercialized products emerged, which provides good foundationsfor the new generation zoom lens.The dissertation makes a target on the zoom lens design method with liquidlenses as fundamental elements and studies the problems that will encounter duringthe design process. Aiming at Gauss Optics concerning with variable focus elements,conditions that keep the image plane stable were discussed. On this basis, a maximumzoom ratio calculation method was proposed to choose a reasonable system structureaccording to the focus range limitation of liquid lenses. Aberration characteristics ofone single liquid lens was analyzed by means of modern geometrical optics theory,and two ways for aberration balancing were discussed based on third order aberrationcoefficients, both of which will give theoretical references to choose a suitable systemstructure with great potential for optimization.Finally, a long focus zoom lens with a high zoom ratio of2.5was designed for apractical application. As primary exploration, a monochromatic system was designed to verify the feasibility of our zoom ratio calculation methods and aberrationscompensation consideration, and a multi-focal-length zoom system was obtained. Thefinal design of our zoom lens gave a good solution for both chromatic aberrations andthe reduction of the system size which took full advantage of the focus range of liquidlenses. The total track of our system is only135mm, the MTF value over the full fieldof view is higher than0.5. The design results show that the research work in mydissertation will give a basic theoretical guidance for zoom lens design with liquidlenses.